O2 Fitness to open in Hanover Center

Monday

May 20, 2013 at 1:42 PM

O2 Fitness is expected to open in Hanover Center Dec. 1, Oleander Co. said Monday.

By Wayne FaulknerWayne.Faulkner@StarNewsOnline.com

O2 Fitness is expected to open in Hanover Center Dec. 1, Oleander Co. said Monday.The upscale club, which will have a 10-year lease, will go into 26,000 square feet of existing space that once was occupied by the Sears warehouse, said Oleander's Jim Smith. O2 will continue to operate its 17,000-square-foot facility at Mayfaire, and the new club will duplicate a lot of the same features, Smith said.The entrance will face Park Avenue near the corner of Independence Boulevard."If you look at the O2 front door you would look at the fire station," Smith said.O2 recently submitted plans to the city.Cothran Harris Architecture, of Wilmington, designed the O2 facility. The Raleigh-based company has three locations in the capital city, two in Chapel Hill and one each in Cary, Fuquay-Varina and Wake Forest.With O2's signing, the 320,000-square-foot Hanover Center will have no vacancies, Smith said. The center, across Oleander Drive from Independence Mall, has seen growth in the past year as Hobby Lobby took space formerly occupied by the Havertys furniture store. Harris Teeter also has completed a major expansion.Smith said that O2 chose the midtown location because the center draws from a number of areas including downtown, Leland and the area around New Hanover Regional Medical Center."We are in the middle of some very stable neighborhoods," he said.New developments at Hanover Center have occurred during a depressed commercial real estate market. But Smith said, "I think things are picking up again."He also said O2 is expected to bring a lot of business to other establishments in the center."We match up retailers who will feed each other," Smith said.